From Missouri an American Farmer Looks Back by Thad Snow (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012

REVIEWS 81 them to enlist. Would soldiers, if relationships between federal policy pressed, have articulated an under- and local responses. In all, Freedom standing of the necessity of eman- National is an excellent contribution cipation? Certainly there is enough to our understanding of the ideologi- circumstantial evidence to suggest cal motivations of northerners. It fol- that many would have, but the em- lows in the footsteps of works such phasis that Oakes has placed on this as William C. Harris’s With Charity ideology will reignite the debate over For All (1997), Eric Foner’s Free Soil, the political and ideological motives Free Labor, Free Men (1995), Chandra of Northern citizens and soldiers. Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Ultimately, the problems in Over (2007), and Gary Gallagher’s Oakes’s work are minor; they stem recent The Union War (2011), in illus- from the impressive scope of his trating just how complex the ideologi- project and from his attempt to re- cal tenets that drove the Union war position Republican ideology and effort remain even nearly 150 years policy within a historical narrative. after the last shots were fired. As such, addressing the nuances of dissent would have been impractical RYAN W. K EATING is Assistant Professor within the framework of this project, of History at California State Univer- but their absence offers an avenue sity, San Bernardino. for future research into the complex From Missouri An American Farmer Looks Back By Thad Snow (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012. Pp. v, 283. Illustrations, index. Paper- bound, $25.00.) Thad Snow’s personal account of agriculture—including his pacifist agricultural change in the first half beliefs, which are woven into the ac- of the twentieth century remains as count as one-liners—provides a valu- instructive for readers today as it was able addition to the more standard when first published in 1954. An accounts that academics and officials ordinary dirt farmer who was eventu- have given of those same changes. ally drawn into the national scene in Thad Snow was born in 1881 in Washington, Snow shot straight from Greenfield, Indiana, where aspiring the hip, proving that a common man author James Whitcomb Riley was could indeed do uncommon things to a friend. Choosing not to pursue a influence government policies. His professional career, Snow turned to perspective on changes in American farming as a young man. In 1911 he 82 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY moved to the last Midwest frontier— tions were prompted by the misal- the delta of southeastern Missouri— lotment of government payments and remained a farmer there until that should have gone to tenants and his retirement around 1950, when sharecroppers, but were kept by the he wrote this retrospective account. plantation operators. Snow’s appear- One theme of Snow’s book is ance before congressional commit- the conversion of southeastern Mis- tees, and his work with Washington souri from a midwestern economy officials to resolve the embarrassment of corn, wheat, and hogs into a part to the government, gave the author of the cotton-growing South. This his place in history that extends well economic transformation involved beyond the local scene. demographic conversion from white This is a reprint of the original owner-operator farmers to a system of book of the same title published by white plantation owners and mostly Houghton Mifflin in 1954. The pro- black sharecroppers and tenants. cess of digitizing Snow’s work seems Snow also address the conversion of to have introduced many errors that the area’s wetlands (Snow coined the were not corrected by editing. Readers term “Swampeast Missouri” for the will find their progress disrupted by region) into a deforested, drained encountering, for example, “bad” for landscape that became Missouri’s “had,” “lock” for “look,” and “crone” richest agricultural region. He wit- for “came.” Missing or misplaced pe- nessed the demise of these wetlands riods and commas are also frequent. and an accompanying shift from pre- The editor chose not to include mechanized farming to large-scale, any explanatory footnotes, and her mechanized farming. brief introduction provides too little Yet Snow’s most instructive theme information about Snow himself. is the increasing role of government Readers can compensate for this with in agriculture. The U.S. Army Corps Bonnie Stepenoff’s excellent biogra- of Engineers’ flood control efforts phy, Thad Snow: A Life of Social Reform had devastating effects on the region’s in the Missouri Bootheel (2003). poor, mostly black, farmworkers. Snow shows how New Deal programs, WALTER A. SCHROEDER is a retired As- despite good intentions, failed to sociate Professor of Geography at achieve their goals—thanks to manip- the University of Missouri-Columbia ulation by the wealthy landowners. and lives in Columbia. He has writ- The climax of his account concerns ten Opening the Ozarks: A Historical the Missouri Bootheel’s famous 1939 Geography of Missouri’s Ste. Genevieve roadside demonstrations, which drew District 1760-1830 (2002) and other national attention to the plight of the books and articles on the history of landless, and which white landowner settlement and the natural environ- neighbors blamed Snow for organiz- ment of Missouri. ing. These spontaneous demonstra-.

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